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The iPhone 14 Pro Max costs $1,099 to buy, but here's how much it costs to make
- An analysis firm has deduced the approximate bill-of-materials (BoM) cost of an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
- Allegedly, one of these phones costs just $464, less than half of its $1,099 retail price.
- This BoM cost is actually 3.7% higher than last year’s equivalent model.
If you want the latest and greatest iPhone, you want the iPhone 14 Pro Max. It’s the most feature-packed iPhone ever, including the latest chipset, the best camera, the biggest display, the biggest battery, and all the newest features, including Dynamic Island. All that will set you back a minimum of $1,099 for the model with 128GB of internal storage.
However, it certainly doesn’t cost Apple $1,099 to make one. According to a Counterpoint Research report, Apple spends around $464 to create one 14 Pro Max. This is known as the bill-of-materials (BoM) cost, as it summarizes all the costs of the physical aspects of the device. As you can see, the BoM cost is less than half of what you’d pay at retail — close to 42%, to be more precise.
Driving most of that cost is Apple’s own silicon. Counterpoint says that about 22% of the BoM cost of an iPhone 14 Pro Max is due to the A16 Bionic and its related components.
Of course, anytime we talk about the BoM cost of a smartphone, we need to point out that this does not represent the total cost of the phone. The BoM price does not cover things like shipment, for example, so the cost of getting an iPhone from the factory to a retail outlet (or your doorstep) isn’t included. Likewise, the BoM cost does not account for the R&D costs Apple took on to design the phone, among many other costs.
Still, the BoM of the iPhone 14 Pro Max is an interesting number, mainly because it is 3.7% higher than the previous iPhone 13 Pro Max. That means it costs Apple at least 3.7% more to create the largest iPhone in its most recent series, but the US retail price is still the same. This is a good representation of why smartphone prices are creeping upward worldwide (even if they’re still staying the same here in the US).
Regardless, that increase in the BoM cost for an iPhone will probably affect US pricing sooner rather than later. In other words, expect the iPhone 15 lineup to be nominally more expensive — and Android phones to follow suit.